The White House 2026 counter-terrorism strategy has identified Islamist extremist groups, Latin American "narco-terrorists" and left-wing agitators as the biggest threats to the US.
The document, released on Wednesday, also says that Iran poses the biggest threat in the Middle East.
"We face new categories and combinations of violent actors that make the established ways of doing counter-terrorism insufficient or obsolete," it said. "We face a multiplicity of deadly threats from terror groups and non-state actors often secretly supported by governments who wish to undermine us."
Sebastian Gorka, the White House counter-terrorism director, told reporters President Donald Trump had signed the document on Tuesday, "driven by the principle that America is our homeland and must be protected".
Mr Gorka said the new strategy "prioritises the neutralisation of hemispheric terror threats by incapacitating cartel operations", and focuses on identifying and neutralising "violent, secular political groups whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-gender or anarchist, such as Antifa".
The strategy focuses heavily on threats posed by leftist groups but makes no mention of right-wing ideology which, according to a study by the conservative Cato Institute, is the second most common motivator behind political violence in the country, after religious extremism.
Mr Gorka said US officials will meet representatives from allied countries on Friday to discuss efforts to battle terrorist threats, especially from Iran.
While the top priority in the new strategy is confronting drug cartels, the second is Islamist extremist groups, particularly Al Qaeda and ISIS and their derivatives. Also included on the list is the Muslim Brotherhood, the Lebanese, Jordanian and Egyptian chapters of which were designated as terrorist groups this year.
The Muslim Brotherhood, the document stated, "is the root of all modern Islamist terrorism".
It highlighted a deepening connection between left-wing and Islamist extremist groups, as well as between established "legacy" groups such as Al Shabab in Somalia and the Houthis in Yemen.
The greatest threat to the US from the Middle East comes from Iran, the strategy stated, "directly in the form of its nuclear and missile capabilities, and indirectly in the form of the billions of dollars it funnels to its terror proxies, including Hezbollah".
"We will continue to focus our kinetic, intelligence and cyber operations against Iranian-backed terror proxies who plot against Americans, and we will take decisive action against regime actors who plot attacks against Americans in the homeland, as well as Iranian dissidents and Israelis in our country," it said.
The strategy also dedicates a large section to Africa, which highlights the threats posed by Al Qaeda and ISIS offshoot groups on the continent. The Sahel accounted for more than half of all terrorism-related deaths globally in 2024 and continued to dominate in 2025, according to the Centre for Strategic and International Studies. The document defines it not as the challenge these groups pose to African governments, but their threat to Christians.
"The plight of the most persecuted people on Earth has been ignored for too long," it states. "While America is not a neocolonial power set on shaping African nations in its image, we will not permit terrorist groups operating on the continent to massacre Christians with impunity."
In countering terrorist threats, the US will focus on efforts to derail covert support for such groups by adversaries, including through sanctions, stopping ships and covert operations.
Included in this mission is a series of "high-intensity but short campaigns" against Islamist extremist groups abroad, particularly ISIS and Al Qaeda.
